Gallery: Amazing space photos from the Hubble telescope

NASA, NASA09.09.2009

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope handout image creates a picture composed of gas and dust, the pillar resides in a tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, located 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. The image shows that astronomers are given a much more complete view of the pillar and its contents when distinct details not seen at visible wavelengths are uncovered in near-infrared light. Scorching radiation and fast winds (streams of charged particles) from these stars are sculpting the pillar and causing new stars to form within it. Streamers of gas and dust can be seen flowing off the top of the structure.

NASA
/ NASA

In this composite image provided by NASA, the Barred Spiral Galaxy (NGC 6217) in the Ursa Minor constellation is pictured in Space. Today, September 9, 2009, NASA released the first images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope since its repair in the spring.NASA
/ Getty Images

In this image provided by NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team, the planet Jupiter is pictured July 23, 2009 in Space. Today, September 9, 2009, NASA released the first images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope since its repair in the spring.NASA
/ Getty Images

This NASA handout image received September 9, 2009, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows a panoramic view of a colorful assortment of 100,000 stars residing in the crowded core of a giant star cluster. The image reveals a small region inside the massive globular cluster Omega Centauri, which boasts nearly 10 million stars. Globular clusters, ancient swarms of stars united by gravity, are the homesteaders of our Milky Way galaxy. The stars in Omega Centauri are between 10 billion and 12 billion years old. The cluster lies about 16,000 light-years from Earth.NASA
/ Getty Images

Hubble's first images since servicing Mission 4. Galactic wreckage in Stephan's Quintet. Stephan's Quintet, as the name implies, is a group of five galaxies. A clash among members of a famous galaxy quintet reveals an assortment of stars across a wide colour range, from young, blue stars to aging, red stars. This portrait of Stephan's Quintet, also known as the Hickson Compact Group 92, was taken by the new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.NASA
/ NASA

Hubble's first images since servicing Mission 4. Butterfly emerges from stellar demise in planetary nebula. What resemble dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to nearly 20 000 degrees Celsius. The gas is tearing across space at more than 950 000 kilometres per hour ó fast enough to travel from Earth to the Moon in 24 minutes. A dying star that was once about five times the mass of the Sun is at the centre of this fury.NASA
/ NASA

This undated image taken by the Hubble telescope shows Pluto and its moons: Charon, Nix, and Hydra.The International Astronomical Union announced on August 24, 2006 that it no longer considers Pluto a planet, a status it has held since its discovery in 1930. The announcement reduces the solar system from nine planets to eight.NASA
/ Getty Images

Astronaut Richard M. Linnehan, STS-109 mission specialist, anchored on the end of the Space Shuttle Columbia?s Remote Manipulator System (RMS) robotic arm, unfolds a solar array during the mission's first scheduled session of extravehicular activity (EVA). Astronaut John M. Grunsfeld (out of frame), payload commander, works in tandem with Linnehan during the space walk to replace one of the two Hubble Space Telescope's (HST) second-generation solar arrays, which is also know as SA2, and a Diode Box Assembly. The solar array was replaced with a new, third-generation solar array, which is called SA3. The space walkers also did some prep work for STS-109's other sessions of extravehicular activity (EVA).NASA
/ NASA

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST), backdropped against a horizon scene while in the grasp of the Space Shuttle Columbia's robotic arm, was captured by the STS-109 crew members on flight day three. Moments later, the giant telescope was locked down in the shuttle's cargo bay, where it went on to remain for almost a week as the crew members performed five space walks in five days to service and upgrade it.NASA
/ NASA

Backdropped by the horizon of the blue and white Earth and the blackness of space, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) floats gracefully after the release from Columbia?s robot arm at the close of a successful servicing mission. The event marks the fifth time in history that a Space Shuttle has released the great observatory. Those occasions were the initial release in 1990 and four subsequent servicing missions including STS-109.NASA
/ NASA

In this image released by NASA, the space shuttle Atlantis (C top) and the Hubble Space Telescope (C bottom) are seen in silhouette, side by side in this solar transit image made at 12:17EDT/16:17GMT, on May 13, 2009, from west of Vero Beach, Florida. The two spaceships were at an altitude of 600 km and they zipped across the sun in only 0.8 seconds.Thierry Legault
/ NASA

The Mont Megantic Observatory looks up at a montage of deep-space images from the Hubble Space Telescope.Courtest NASA
/ Canwest News Service

This handout image of the giant, active galaxy NGC 1275, obtained August 21, 2008 was taken using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescopeís Advanced Camera for Surveys in July and August 2006. It provides amazing detail and resolution of fragile filamentary structures, which show up as a reddish lacy structure surrounding the central bright galaxy. These filaments are cool despite being surrounded by gas that is around 55 million ŽC. They are suspended in a magnetic field which maintains their structure and demonstrates how energy from the supermassive black hole hosted at the centre of the galaxy is transferred to the surrounding gas.NASA
/ Getty Images

An image taken by Hubble Space telescope and released on October 30, 2008 by European Space Agency (ESA), shows a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147, photographed on October 27-28, 2008. Arp 147 lies in the constellation of Cetus, more than 400 million light-years away from Earth.NASA
/ Getty Images

An artist's concept released on November 13, 2008 of the star Fomalhaut and the Jupiter-type planet that the Hubble Space Telescope observed. A ring of debris appears to surround Fomalhaut as well. The planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the 200-million-year-old star every 872 years. After an eight-year quest for images, a US astronomer using a camera aboard the Hubble space telescope has snapped the first picture of a planet outside our solar system. Astronomer Paul Kalas captured the first visible-light images of a planet some 25 light years from our solar system using a camera mounted on the Hubble telescope.NASA
/ Getty Images

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